Home school, Fey style

We have our own little way of homeschooling out here in Hammanskraal. I will be the first to admit that there are probably a lot of things we could be doing better and many areas we need to improve on, but for a family that never had homeschooling in mind, at 6 weeks in we are doing just fine. 

I would give you a glimpse into a typical day of homeschooling, but we really don’t have a typical day yet. That is probably one of the things we need to improve on : ) Instead I will just tell you how today looked.

Our kids continue to rise and shine bright and early, just like they always have. I continue to long for sleep and hang out in bed as long as I can, just like I always have. Darin, who used to get up before all of us to get to work now falls somewhere in between the two extremes. This morning, I rolled out of bed around 7:30. The kids had already been awake for over an hour. I came into the living/dining room and the kids were busy watching a movie. Darin was typing up some emails. I made myself some instant coffee and read the new emails that had come in since we last checked before bed. 

Then, while the kids continued to watch their movie, Darin went across the road to do some more internet stuff and I got ready for the day. Darin came back and we gave the kids 5 more minutes of movie watching time. Home schooling officially began a little before 9 this morning. We started by reading from our devotional book. Each week there is a new Bible verse for the kids (and us) to learn, and so far, they are doing just great. They know Genesis 1:1, Psalm 89:28, Proverbs 3:1, Proverbs 3:5, 1 Timothy 4:12 and this week they are learning John 3:16. You will have to look them up as I am too tired to type them all out. 

After our Bible time, Darin took Tyson to the dining room table to do some work and Jori and I stayed in the home school room. Today Tyson worked on finding the perimeter of triangles, squares and rectangles in math. Then he read some interesting facts in one of his books and wrote a little report on what he read. Later on he came and read his report to all of us. Here it is:

“An Assassin bug strikes with its beak. Its main prey is small creatures like spiders and other things. Some kind of beetle can spray a liquid at predators.”

I wish you all could have heard him read the report! He did a great job. Tyson also worked on two pages of handwriting, small "a" and small "d", in his Handwriting Without Tears workbook. He finished off his day by working on his weekly photo report, which you will have to wait to read later in the week! He did have a small recess in there as well.

Jori and I started out our day working on number partners. I cut up some small squares of paper and we used these to make equations. Then we talked about all the different number partners that a number can have. Like 3 can have 0, 3 and 1,2 and you can switch these around as well. We went up to the number 5 and then moved on to the next thing, which was reading. We read in her short “I” book for a bit, and then we went over some sight words that I had made for her this morning. 

Later on, we worked on her “Explode the Code” book, which is a phonics workbook. Today we started the short “u” section. She has to read words, do some writing, matching and more. After recess, we worked on some opposites in another book that we brought from home. Then we did a little more reading and that was it.

Today was actually a pretty long day for us, and I think we were busy for about an hour and a half. I need to get out and find some more stuff for the kids to do and maybe start having them do some science as well. As of right now, we are pretty sure that we will continue homeschooling through the next school year, which would start in January and end in December. This is partly due to a lack of funds and partly due to our current location and us not knowing where we’ll be living as of next August. 

We do need to have something a bit more substantial if we are going to keep up with home schooling, and I would love to have some help in this area. So please, either email me at thefeyfamily@gmail.com or leave a comment and let me know what you are using and if you like it. If we were in the states, Jori would just be starting kindergarten and Tyson would be in second grade. Right now we are working through workbooks at those grade levels, so I am not really sure where they will be in January. Do I just start over with kindergarten and second grade or bump them both up a year? See, I am totally not cut out for this!!